


Ghost Stories

by threewalls



Series: Schirra [45]
Category: Final Fantasy XII
Genre: 707 OV, Archades, Canonical Character Death, Cross-cultural, Gen, Grief, Historiography, Politics, Post-Game(s), Siblings, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-10-30
Updated: 2007-10-30
Packaged: 2017-10-15 10:25:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/159886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threewalls/pseuds/threewalls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><cite>Archadians do not believe in slighting the dead by chance.</cite></p><p>General post-game spoilers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghost Stories

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mithrigil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithrigil/gifts).



Larsa pours good red wine into a gaping demon's mouth carved beside the crypt's wrought-iron gate, whispering a traditional prayer that speaks more of respect for the life lived than what lies beyond. The mouth leads to a thin channel built into the stone, the channel to an wide-mouthed vessel set beside her funerary urn chained and locked within. From his history lessons, Larsa knows that in the early days of the republic they offered blood: that of black rats, dreamhares or chocobos, according to one's means; and yet before that, before the kings had been killed, so distant that few now remember, it was thought to show the highest honour to feed the dead the unconquered darker-skinned humes of the north. She would not have wished unnecessary blood spilt. For his part, Larsa hopes that her spirit is not bound by his offerings poured into the darkness, or those that came before. It would be pleasant to believe that Drace's spirit now lay within an innocent baby, as the Kilteans hold. He has not seen her, and that is a relief.

"Do you fear ghosts, your Excellency?"

The carafe jerks in Larsa's hands, but it is already too empty for an ill-omened spill. In the stillness, the silence, he had forgotten that he was not alone among the dead.

They had met no one at the gate crystal, or in the avenues further towards their destination. Larsa had walked ahead of his companion, as always, navigating more by the landmarks of curious architecture branded on his memory than the map from the archives marked out by his paces, which were always just a little more unreliable each time he took their measure. There was the arbour-crypt of the Andii flanked by manufacted willows, their cast bronze leaves eternally changing from brown to green. There, the House Lirshall's gaudy neo-Galtean folly, dating their fortunes as equally, painfully new in his grandfather's second indiction. By habit, Larsa dropped his hand to brush over the relief sculpture of Admiral Cupper's faithful hound; it is all he remembers of his second journey carried into the dark to bury his brothers. Of the first, that of his birth mother, he remembers nothing at all. Farther in and further on, the sour, familiar perfume of death dispersed to the more subtle scents of dust, stone and damp earth. The last of the war's dead had been interred months ago; Archadians do not come here if they can help it.

A wan light falls from eternally glowing crystals set about the pillars that supported the sky of stone above their heads.

"Archadians do not believe in slighting the dead by chance," Larsa temporises, lest he give offence. Of what Landians believed, or what one some twenty years removed from his culture might believe, Larsa has never read or been told.

When the old city alone was Archades, her dead were housed along the roads stretching out from the city walls, in prisons of stone and iron built by families, guilds and Houses. A secondary paling kept scavengers from the dead, and the dead from the living. When, on the occasion of the Empire's birth, the present city was being built, it was an obvious efficiency to strengthen the secondary paling and built within. In what Dorneus once described as the engineering marvel of the age, innumerable thick stone columns were constructed among the tombs to support the foundations of the new city, while its sewers were directed to the old city rather than course through Archades of the Dead below.

"Is that why he built all this?"

Basch Gabranth's line of sight does not waver from the carvings across the crypt's lintel: her name, rank and the dates that encompassed her life.

Perhaps to inexperienced eyes, Drace's crypt of Western marble seemed an honour, both higher and broader than a judge magister in plate and carved with what some sculptor had thought were scenes from her life. However, war made necessity of much, her internment included. The marble's thin streaks of grey-green mark it one grade below immaculate perfection, as calculated an insult as choosing to bury her here, with military honours among the foreigners who had found prestige in Archadia's armed forces, instead of releasing her body to her family. As allowing her to be remembered in stone as warrior, judge magister and nursemaid to House Solidor's youngest scion.

"At her funeral, my brother spoke of honouring her years of service to the Empire, in spite of her unfortunate hysterical break following the late emperor's assassination."

They had flanked Vayne that day; of course, this Gabranth does not remember. His father's funeral would have been delayed so long as was necessary for Larsa's return, his remains interred in state. Drace's was held off only so long as it took for her crypt to be built, further, politically invisible, expense taken from the Imperial war chest. Why indeed; did Vayne fear that, despite the war, House Drace would not be patriotic enough?

"However, in truth, I do not know."

The cold from the marble seeps through Larsa's thin gloves; he does not move his hands. If his brother-- autocrat, warmonger, patriot-- had not honoured her, it would have been politically imprudent for Larsa to do so now. He tries not to think on that, tries not to be grateful.

"It will not be thought remarkable that you come with me here to pay your respects. There were rumours that reached even my ears, though others would better know the truth of them."

" _I_ killed her," Gabranth says, and Larsa is glad that still his guardian only looks at the crypt.

The question of whether Noah Gabranth had loved, had been loved is not one Larsa can answer. (He has guesses, but Noah is Basch's brother.) All the rumours Larsa has heard, he has heard since their deaths. All Archades loves a good story. There have been several, lewd, anonymous ballads, and several more romans à clef; there was an opera, _Strout and Pemain_ , that played in Trant until the theatres closed for the summer. (Pemain was played by a lyric soprano in tinfoil plate; Larsa had clapped politely, for the music was pleasant and better a tragic-unhistorical- romance than a revival of the classic tales of the republic's founding.) Drace had had the love of her surrogate son, but of a man (or of a woman?) Larsa cannot say. He had been too young to think to ask after her affections, young enough to think he held her heart in all the ways that mattered.

"We are well-matched in that, it seems," Larsa comments, brushing at his cheeks. "She died for me."

Having acknowledged the tears, he discovers they do not stop. Drace died not only him, but for her beliefs, a vision of a just empire, proving her strength of conviction equal to the strength of her body. Larsa would do honour to her lessons, though it take his whole reign. His father-- Larsa fears his father would see only that he betrayed his brother, and not the reason why. _Your example gave me strength I did not know I had. I thank you._

When Larsa's gloves become very wet, he wipes them on the marble. There is no such ritual, but it seems right.

"In Landis, we also burnt the dead," Gabranth says. "We built high wooden pyres and let them burn until the wind carried the ashes out over the rivers or the sea. We stopped, during the war. Either the dead understand that the living must attend to the living first, or when the dead go where we cannot follow, they do not look back."

Larsa does not know what he believes of the dead. He has read as many tales of fiction as he has anthropological works and histories, and there is, he thinks, different truths in both. After making his final genuflection, Larsa turns from her crypt and departs thinking only of the path to the crystal.

 _He_ does not look back. The sun is blinding. He hopes she is free.


End file.
